Ken Fate, the general manager of Raven Radio, made the announcement at this week’s meeting of the Sitka Chamber of Commerce (5-16-12).

Fate told the Chamber – which sponsors the 4th of July event – that he had only just learned that he and his three predecessors at KCAW would serve as grand marshals for this year’s parade.

Now, he’s looking for a suitable ride for himself, Lily Herwald, Barnaby Dow, and Rich McClear.

“Does anybody have a Corvette or a convertible they want to donate to the cause?”

Fate went on to tell the chamber about KCAW’s thirty-year history, and its connections – both social and financial – to the community.

He reminded the audience that Raven Radio broadcasts 49 programs a week hosted by 65 community volunteers. Another 50 volunteers made up the substitute roster.

Fate corrected the common misconception that KCAW is owned by National Public Radio, or the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

He said Raven Radio’s license is owned by its membership: the listeners who support the station financially during its twice-yearly fund drives.

“Some folks think of public radio as something that is brought to the community from the outside. I just want to make very clear that Raven Radio is of, by, and for the people of Sitka.”

Fate stressed the economic impact of the station. It brings in almost $300,000 in federal funding annually from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and generates another $200,000 in business underwriting and memberships. The station owns the 104-year-old Cable House, and has leveraged grants from the Rural Development Administration, the Rasmuson Foundation, and other agencies, to renovate the building from top-to-bottom using local contractors exclusively.

Fate said Raven Radio is successful because Sitka is successful. He said the station was integral to the community’s vibrancy – especially its local news service.

“News reporting – having a daily newscast, a daily newspaper that’s locally-owned – a daily newscast and two full-time news people helps a community (any community) be introspective, democratic, and to thrive. I feel passionately that it’s not just something that occurs. A healthy community relies and depends on looking at itself and all of the good and the bad it does, in a neutral voice, and in an all-inclusive way, so that every voice in the community is welcome.”

Fate said the station has made considerable efforts to make sure those voices – and the news – are heard, even in dire circumstances. Emergency generators recently have been installed at both the Cable House and at the station’s transmitter site on Japonski Island, so city power outages will no longer knock KCAW off the air. And if Sitka were ever inundated, as northeastern Japan was 14 months ago, the station now has a portable transmitter – called “Radio-to-Go” that can run off of a car battery.

Finally, Fate said that Raven Radio’s internet presence had dramatically expanded the station’s reach. The station’s website receives over 2,000 unique visitors a week; at least 500 unique listeners per week stream the station online.

An audience member asked Fate if KCAW’s growing web audience would dilute Raven Radio’s programming.

“I think that comment defines one of our next great challenges. As our audience has been Southeast Alaska, and now that audience has the potential – and the reality – of being worldwide, how do we (or do we?) change the programming? Or if not, why? The first step is to understand that that’s a distinction. If you’re a program director, the question is who are you programming to and why? And just realizing that the game table has changed is the most important thing for us to do. We do know that; it’s just started. We’ll be evaluating how to proceed to best protect what we have, and to grow what we might want to get to.”

Listen to Ken Fate’s complete address to the Sitka Chamber of Commerce.

Baranof Barracudas swim coach Suha Tokman is returning to the deck after 18 years. Since leaving Sitka in 1994, Tokman has coached in Medford, OR, and in his native Istanbul.

Learn more about the Baranof Barracudas Swim Club.

The Fortress bears pry open a dumpster in a can test last spring. (Photo Phil Mooney/ADF&G)

The local sanitation company is doing a field test of two prospective containers. Both are mostly plastic, and neither is considered “bear-proof.” All the authorities want to do is to frustrate brown bears looking for an easy meal, in the hope that they move on.

Last year, a local group known as the Bear Task Force arranged to leave a bear-resistant trash can in the Fortress, with a tasty treat sealed inside. Fortress co-director Les Kinnear describes what (you probably already suspect) happened.

“We left one in the habitat for a couple of days, because they drug it into the pool. It’s like they wanted to have more time to work on it. It was plastic. They can destroy even substantial plastic products.”

Kinnear would be the first to admit that it was not a fair test. The bears here are routinely given challenges to get to their food. It’s placed in a hollowed-out tree trunk, or inside a buoy ball with a small opening. Kinnear calls them “puzzle feeders.”
Last year’s trash can test was not all that unusual for the two full-grown male brown bears.

“So when our bears approach a trash can, they see that as another challenge. A wild bear doesn’t exactly see that. A wild bear is there because he’s hungry, not because he’s interested or playful. His primary interest is gathering food as economically as possible.”

The can happened to be one that Alaska Pacific Environmental Services is using in this spring’s field test in Sitka, though the lid is now made out of custom-welded aluminum instead of plastic. APES, also known locally as Stragier Sanitation, is deploying twenty-four cans in two varieties, one a manufactured bear-resistant can with a locking lid, and the other the more conventional can with the aluminum lid.

Police Chief Sheldon Schmidt demonstrates a can with a modified aluminum lid. (Photo Robert Woolsey/KCAW)

“I think the cans are going to be bear resistant. They’re not going to be a can that a bear can just walk up to, open up, and grab the trash. Or, they’re not going to be a can that a bear can walk by, knock over, and garbage spills all over the street.”

The theory is that bears, working mainly in the limited hours of darkness, won’t want to invest the effort.

“If the bear wanted to get in the can, it could spend some time doing it, but if it spends twenty hours out there, by that time the police or ADF&G can see what’s going on and chase the bear away.”

Phil Mooney, the local wildlife biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish & Game, agrees.

“Especially with young bears moving through, they can tip them over but if they can’t get into it, it’s very typical for our bears to hit-and-run. Knock it over, grab something out of it, go to the next can.”

Mooney is pretty certain that – like the bears in the Fortress – we’re not just training wild bears to a higher level.

“Nope. No, we’re going to be able to respond. One of the issues is that by the time dispatch gets the call, and they can respond and we can respond, the bear is already two blocks away, and moving. They’re quick to learn that an easy meal is nice, but they’re not going to spend a lot of time drawing attention to themselves.”

Mooney, along with police, is the front-line of Sitka’s response to bears. In 2009, bear calls peaked at over 200. Nineteen bears were destroyed or removed from the area that summer. Calls tapered significantly in the last two years, but Mooney expects it to start to creep up again.

“We’re going to see more bear activity this summer than we did last year, slowly increasing as those voids that were created in the landscape and habitat out there are filled in by other bears.”

The new cans have been placed at homes in the Indian River neighborhood – Sitka’s primary bear corridor – the Cascade St. neighborhood, and at both ends of the road system. In September, Alaska Pacific Environmental Services will survey customers to see which cans they preferred, and how they worked out.

APES is footing the bill for the field test. Andrew Thoms, with the Bear Task Force, says if it’s a success, his group’s next job will be to figure out how to bring more cans to town, and how to deploy them. There may be some efficiencies in buying cans with Juneau, since APES is contemplating a similar trash system in that city.

Les Kinnear, meanwhile, says his bears are happy to help out if more cans need to be tested in the future.

“That’s the nature of the beast, is to be inquisitive. They got to be bears by being very, very strong and clever and powerful and capable.”

View the full-size image.

Find more information online at the Hames Center website.

Juneau lawyer Joe Geldhof represented Sitkans for Responsible Government in their efforts to put a voter initiative on the ballot in 2008. Sitka’s municipal attorney refused to certify the initiative, and the Superior Court ultimately backed her up.

Late last month, Geldhof and Sitkans for Responsible Government won a reversal in the Alaska Supreme Court. The justices gave the initiative the green light, but also remanded the case back to the Sitka judge to review some apparent conflicts in Sitka’s code.

Read the full Alaska Supreme Court ruling here.
Read a detailed, written response from Sitka municipal attorney Theresa Hillhouse.
Listen to Hillhouse’s remarks to the Assembly on May 8, 2012.

At the last assembly meeting (Tue 5-8-12), municipal attorney Theresa Hillhouse offered her first public explanation of the Supreme Court ruling.

Hillhouse’s remarks were broadcast live on both radio and television, for about eight minutes.

Listening to her, you would not come away with the impression that the city’s lawyers suffered much of a setback in Alaska’s highest court.

“The courts reversed the Superior Court decisions, finding that, as far as the language, it wasn’t as confusing as some of the initiatives, it wasn’t as confusing as some of the initiatives that come up to the Supreme Court. As far as the process, they noticed that Sitka does have some conflicting sections – and to take a look at that and clean it up ourselves.”

“They lost, and they lost bad…”

Joe Geldhof represents Sitkans for Responsible Government.

“I think any fair reading of the decision by the Alaska Supreme Court in this case is that the City and Borough of Sitka, on two substantive, important issues – they got croaked.”

Those two “substantive issues” were that the petition’s language was confusing and misleading, and that the initiative was “unenforceable and contrary to law.” The Supreme Court leaves little room for disagreement about either of those two points. The justices wrote:

The petition clearly states its general purpose to bring the treatment of Sawmill Cove Industrial Park real property under the same rules that govern all other city property, and then it sets out the specific changes to Sitka law that will accomplish this purpose. The petition does not seek to persuade voters with partisan language, nor is it grammatically unclear such that voters could not reasonably understand what conduct they are authorizing. The petition language is neither confusing nor misleading.

In her explanation to the assembly and to the public, Hillhouse says the remand is a chance for the Sitka Superior Court to now evaluate the case on its merits.

“What this case deals with is do the voters vote on an issue of municipal assets. In this case it dealt with the Sawmill Cove property, any sales or lease of certain value – do the voters get to approve those sales?”

Hillhouse, in her reading of the Alaska Constitution, says no. She believes the transfer of municipal assets – even the sale of large tracts of land – is an appropriation, and a prohibited use of the citizen initiative. The constitution also bans the use of citizen initiatives for creating courts, for instance, and legal jurisdictions.

But is approving or disapproving the sale of land really an “appropriation”? Geldhof doesn’t think that’s what the framers had in mind.

“Well, there is an important point there. Because Alaska’s Supreme Court has been diligent since statehood in making sure that a bunch of folks can’t get together in a saloon and come up with a local, or even statewide initiative, that says, Let’s give ourselves a big pile of money. Let’s give ourselves a whole bunch of land.”

Geldhof suspects the city’s legal team is missing the point.

“You can’t just give property to your chums and pals and everyone else because you got the votes. You can’t just start allocating resources. That’s not what Mr. Litman and the other folks in Sitka trying to put this before the electorate are trying to do. It’s exactly the opposite.”

A couple of weeks before the Supreme Court decided in favor of Sitkans for Responsible Government, the justices ruled against a group in Kenai called the Alliance of Concerned Taxpayers, who wanted to give voters the authority to ratify capital expenditures of over $1-million dollars.

Hillhouse has sent a one-page letter to Sitka Superior Court Judge David George, drawing his attention to the Kenai case.

Geldhof says if the city wants Judge George to consider how the Kenai ruling bears on the Sitka case, they should argue their point publicly.

“I am not going to respond – nor should I – to a letter to a judge that cites a couple of cases and says, You know, these cases are controlling and you don’t have any option, go ahead and dismiss this case. I think it’s much more appropriate, and I have asked Judge George on behalf of the folks in Sitka who brought this case, to set out a scheduling hearing and if Ms. Hillhouse and the lawyers from Anchorage want to brief whatever points they think are relevant to the Superior Court, then they should have that chance.”

Lastly, there’s this: Sitka General Code already requires voter ratification of municipal land sales worth over $500,000 – everywhere but Sawmill Cove Industrial Park. The proposed voter initiative would have simply put city property at Sawmill Cove Industrial Park under the same rules.

Hillhouse wants the assembly to interpret the current Sitka law allowing voter approval of large land sales to mean advisory votes. Based on her definition of a land sale as an appropriation, she thinks the voter ratification in current Sitka code is unconstitutional, and unenforceable… if it were ever to go to the Supreme Court.

“Particularly in the last few years the court has been coming down hard on the appropriations issue, and very much narrowing it. And making clear, especially for appropriations issues, that is something that rests with the assembly and is not to be done by the voters.”

Geldhof is not surprised that the issues of whether a large land sale is an appropriation, or whether long-standing Sitka code is enforceable, are confusing. In fact, he’s quite blunt.

“There seems to be an element of intentionally trying to confuse the assembly.”

Geldhof says the most unfortunate element of this case is that it is pitting the Sitka assembly – who represent the public – against the public. He thinks any constitutional test would ultimately favor the people’s rights to control their government.

“What’s at the heart of this is not legal, technical issues, really. What’s at the heart of this matter is how do you allocate power between the citizens and their elected representatives, and maybe the broad question of: Who’s really running Sitka? The citizens, the assembly, or the municipal attorney?”

Geldhof’s request for a scheduling hearing in the case of Sitkans for Responsible Government vs. City and Borough of Sitka is pending.